Correbarri 2013 - 10k

Yes!!! Back under 39 minutes at least! 38m40. Far from last years best, but I am really happy with todays race. After all it was only a week ago I did over 42k in the mountains and it took me untill wednesday to rest and repair the soreness and get a comfortable easy training run in.

 I am just behind the "blue" guy in the middle

On the left, the only green shirt

After a few colder days, today was still somewhat cloudy but warming up in just a running-shirt was no problem. Probably this race has the nicest warmup area, running up and down a boulevard along the beach and see rays of sunlight play with the clouds and sea, eventhough the sun itself was not to be seen yet. After the normal preparations we gathered in our boxes and had to wait a while since the arch over the startline had lost air, but this problem was soon fixed and we were shot away.
I started fast in spite of having a sensitive left achilles tendon and tried to just run high pace and not bounce too much, which worked fine. The fast start was to see if any other runners ran for the same neighbourhood Gracia and wether or not I could repeat a first place like last year, but already in the first meters it was clear this year faster runners had come down from Gracia and thus after a 7m20 on the 2k and 11m09 on the 3k I relaxed and tried to stay under the 4 minutes per kilometer. I passed the half-way point just under 19 minutes and continued the pace just under 4 minutes. The first half is very flat, but just before the 5k the course goes slightly uphill and just after it passes through Parc de la Ciutadella which is somewhat irregular and then around the 7k mark we went up a bridge. Around the 9k mark there is another slight uphill and there I did slow down a bit, to quickly pick up speed again and push for the finishline. This time I did sprint a bit more, though not top speed because of the achilles tendon. The people from running.es made nice pictures at the finish.

I forgot to smile...